Read by Schine Ammunition as an Alternative

[MacThule]

Unlikely. A larger ship can hold much more ammo, and would likely NOT run out.

I think this is debatable. If the larger ship can be locked down using jump interdiction at stand-off range under heavy PD cover, I think a group of lighter ships could force it to spend all of its ammunition. Smaller ships can OD away to resupply more easily, then return to the fray and continue pressing the larger vessel. Or the smaller ships can simply sacrifice themselves, the player will respawn at base and grab another small ship to return to where the large ship is being pinned down (simulating reinforcements). Eventually the larger ship would find its munitions levels critically low.

 

[Lecic]

I think this is debatable. If the larger ship can be locked down using jump interdiction at stand-off range under heavy PD cover, I think a group of lighter ships could force it to spend all of its ammunition. Smaller ships can OD away to resupply more easily, then return to the fray and continue pressing the larger vessel. Or the smaller ships can simply sacrifice themselves, the player will respawn at base and grab another small ship to return to where the large ship is being pinned down (simulating reinforcements). Eventually the larger ship would find its munitions levels critically low.

If there's a jump inhibitor nearby that's strong enough to stop a large ship, then it's a large target as well that the big ship can use its main guns on. Suddenly, no more jump inhib, and the big ship is gone.

 

[Nickizzy]

Then make it a glass cannon inhibitor with no armor and jamming and pd and 3:1 thrust ratio!
Specialty ships are needed.
[DOUBLEPOST=1453490376,1453488905][/DOUBLEPOST]Or shoot out 20 or so jammed, black hulled orbs of inhibitors(add a logic system to fly with push modules in a line back and forth to make it harder to hit)(or make it look like an asteriod!). Reduncy galore.
[DOUBLEPOST=1453490499][/DOUBLEPOST]Or a small station hidden somewhere that can make and shoot inhibitor orbs into sectors nearby.

Never used inhibitor before though, what are they like?

And what is standoff range? Just out of weapon range? Can't the ship move closer?

 

[Lecic]

Or shoot out 20 or so jammed, black hulled orbs of inhibitors(add a logic system to fly with push modules in a line back and forth to make it harder to hit)(or make it look like an asteriod!). Reduncy galore.

And what is standoff range? Just out of weapon range? Can't the ship move closer?

Then make it a glass cannon inhibitor with no armor and jamming and pd and 3:1 thrust ratio!

-Jamming doesn't work with AI or logic.
-Range is any sector touching the sector the inhibitor is in
-Your glass cannon inhibitor will die horribly to a swarm of lock on missile turrets because PD doesn't work properly

 

[Nickizzy]

-Jamming doesn't work with AI or logic.
-Range is any sector touching the sector the inhibitor is in
-Your glass cannon inhibitor will die horribly to a swarm of lock on missile turrets because PD doesn't work properly

Darn.

1. it should have an option to work then!
2. Thanks
3. Activate cloaking and jamming! And hide in an asteroid field!
And shoot out a bunch of decoy ships with the same mass(armor hunks of the same weight of your inhibitor) and similar name! And stop using split up run-on sentances.

Anyway, lets get back on topic for a few posts.

 

[Lecic]

3. Activate cloaking and jamming! And hide in an asteroid field!

Lock-on missile turrets ignore jamming, unfortunately. A cloaker will not be able to support a large inhibitor, either. And finally, SCANNERS EXIST.

 

[Nickizzy]

But logic doesn't activate scanners either...

Could you have pd turrets deffend against lockons, and use a jammer to hide from the swarmers

 

[Lecic]

But logic doesn't activate scanners either...

Could you have pd turrets deffend against lockons, and use a jammer to hide from the swarmers

Jammers don't work against swarmers. Additionally, I was saying that anyone being inhibited by these things would be able to SCAN and find the things and kill them.

 

[Nickizzy]

Yea...

Lets get back on topic after half a page of (good) arguing.

 

[Waterphoenix]

Although this is a pretty good idea, it would be super annoying for turrets. Having to refill every turret on all your ships would be bad enough, let alone being raided so many times that your bases get taken over because your turrets have nothing to shoot.

If anyone can come up with a solution, you might be able to convince me

 

[jayman38]

Although this is a pretty good idea, it would be super annoying for turrets. Having to refill every turret on all your ships would be bad enough, let alone being raided so many times that your bases get taken over because your turrets have nothing to shoot.

If anyone can come up with a solution, you might be able to convince me

The whole point of this thread is ammunition as an alternative. Not necessarily a replacement. So you'd have energy-based turrets happily firing away with energy weapons, not needing a refill, because those weapon systems aren't connected to an ammo box, so they are working just exactly as they work today.

 

[Waterphoenix]

The whole point of this thread is ammunition as an alternative. Not necessarily a replacement. So you'd have energy-based turrets happily firing away with energy weapons, not needing a refill, because those weapon systems aren't connected to an ammo box, so they are working just exactly as they work today.

Ok, it just seems a little odd to me that a system would be able to fire the exact same thing using energy or physical matter. I suppose a good suggestion would be to make the "ammunition" a consumable upgrade, while still using energy as the primary cost per shot - every shot has a certain buff as long as it has the ammunition, but this is used up. I guess actually that could counter giant ships and actually give fighters a chance - the fighters could have buffed shots on their primary weapon but it would be unlikely that every single turret on a huge ship would also have this, meaning fighters take down the turrets more easily than frigates and bugger ships

 

[jayman38]

Ok, it just seems a little odd to me that a system would be able to fire the exact same thing using energy or physical matter. I suppose a good suggestion would be to make the "ammunition" a consumable upgrade, while still using energy as the primary cost per shot - every shot has a certain buff as long as it has the ammunition, but this is used up. I guess actually that could counter giant ships and actually give fighters a chance - the fighters could have buffed shots on their primary weapon but it would be unlikely that every single turret on a huge ship would also have this, meaning fighters take down the turrets more easily than frigates and bugger ships

Just because the shots look the same, doesn't mean that the weapons are necessarily the same technology. Example: Particle beams accelerate a few charged particles of stuff at near-light-speed for maximum impact. Lasers look much the same but send photons, not particles. (Well, depending on your view of the wave behavior of photons vs. particle behavior of photons, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Similarly, a cannon that fires a shell is different from something someone might call a "plasma cannon" that might fire some kind of pure energy shot.

Starmade is specifically light on lore, to allow the players to make up their own lore at this stage of the game. That might include 3 different beam weapons and 3 different types of cannon. The point can be further illustrated by attaching different lights to different weapon computers to give it a different color "effect". For example, my "Leopard" dropship in Community content differentiates between particle beams and lasers by coloring the particle beams blue and the lasers red. (Yeah, it's hard to see the color on the beam, but it's there.)

 

[Spartan-228]

I am glad to see this hasn't died. I have always believed ammo could add an interesting dynamic to the game.
As can been seen many have ideas on how this would work. In the end I believe that if ammunition is added to the game, there will have to be advantages and disadvantages for bothe. The way I see it ammo would give you high damage weapons, but of course you have limited engagement time. Energy weapons would be weaker, but could fire all day. Or you could set it up so ammo works like effect blocks. This would mean that weapons with ammo would no loger have the effect when they ran out of ammo, wile energy weapons would always have the effect. The upside for the weapons that use ammo dont need the effect blocks.
There would also be the decision on how much space to set aside for ammo storage.

 

[Nickizzy]

I am glad to see this hasn't died. I have always believed ammo could add an interesting dynamic to the game.
As can been seen many have ideas on how this would work. In the end I believe that if ammunition is added to the game, there will have to be advantages and disadvantages for bothe. The way I see it ammo would give you high damage weapons, but of course you have limited engagement time. Energy weapons would be weaker, but could fire all day. Or you could set it up so ammo works like effect blocks. This would mean that weapons with ammo would no loger have the effect when they ran out of ammo, wile energy weapons would always have the effect. The upside for the weapons that use ammo dont need the effect blocks.
There would also be the decision on how much space to set aside for ammo storage.

I would suggest using storages to hold the ammo(if it was a craftable meta-item). Ammo would weigh a large amount and would cost composite and mesh(or scrap? Lots of talk about that).

Ammo effect would:
A. Reduce energy usage
By a good amount, it should be(in energy) the opposite of overdrive, the ammo will be the main problem
B. Either:
1. Add shield penitration
A. small amount that scales down with increased damage(100 damage has 50% penetration, 1000 has 20% penetration), with damage reductions overall as well, but ammo is not a proton-shield weapon, it's a particle-shield weapon. It's the fighters pew-pewing across the deathstar attempting to destroy important things or stuff that will blow up, while cruisers and larger craft can hammer the shields from above, fighters can do slight damage to the larger ship from the start.
B. Flat out overdrive with ammo.
Just a (boring, in my opinion) 2-3 times increase in weapon damage.

Storages would have a toggle between being used or not used by ammo computers, and a variable input number. When the toggel was on, and ammo computer requesting ammo would take it from that storage, if it was off, the storgae holding ammo would not be viable to give ammo. Ammo computers look through docking links, and storgaes would autofill back up to a specified amount through docking chains. Becoause of this turrwts could be smaller.
Balancing(and equasions)
Power/ammo cost:
Ammo is 1 mesh and 1 composite for 10, cheap enough for starting and mass production, but weighs (undecided, based on how much it costs to make and how much is used) 0.1 per ammo(expained latter).

Power would be cut down by 10 to 100x, because most of the cost would come in ammo production and the weight and size the system it would take up.

Ammo is consumed in the formula of 10/cooldown second/module, until 30 modules, when it goes to 20, at 60 it goes to 40, 80 at 90, ect. Because of the decrease in effency with size, larger ships could not(not counting the extremes) hold infident ammo, and small ships with only a storage and cargo block, could shoot for longer comparitive periods.

Shield penitration would be 90% up to 30, 70% to 60, 55% to 90, 40% to 120, 30% to 150, 20% to 180, then 15% to 210, 12.5% to 240, 11.25% to 270, ect.

An example of a fighter would be:
A fighter is made with one 1:1 cannon/cannon system with 10 blocks in one grouping. It has the ammo effect, and one storage with one cargo for ammo.
It requires practically no power. Every shoot costs 1 ammo, and on a full storage it can hold the equivilent of 4000 shots.

(Shield penitration)
The ship has a full 90% penitration, so it does 9 damage per shot, no matter the shields. It can destroy an advanced armor block in 29 shoots(rounding up the decimals), or 2.9 seconds. It can destroy system blocks in 3 shots, or 0.3 seconds. However, it has to deal with PD turrets, and only can shoot for 400 seconds, which is 137 ad armor blocks, or 1379 system blocks. That is not near accurate, because the would be bond to miss most of the time(being cannons:D), or hit more than one block. Also, it would be hard not to be engaged by a turret or defensive fighter, or face the same point for more than 5 minutes over time.

All number are subgect to change(although I did spend quite a bit of time on balancing the mass and damage and cost).

 

[PLIX]

i think we should have some guns like beams and pulses which use power but missiles and cannons need ammo but do more damage and add a railgun which uses both and does more damage

 

[Nickizzy]

i think we should have some guns like beams and pulses which use power but missiles and cannons need ammo but do more damage and add a railgun which uses both and does more damage

I like it as an alternative tertiary effect more because it doesn't force players to figure out a new system, especially because missiles and cannons are two of the most common weapons in the game.

 

[cyberus111]

I disagree 100% with the concept of ammo for weapons being an effect.

If these weapons are going to be more powerful than standard weapons in exchange for requiring ammo then they need to be completely new systems, both computer and modules, NOT an added effect.

If ammo were added as an added effect then 3 seconds to go into build mode, select the primary computer, hit V on the ammo effect computer and suddenly the "ammo depleted" weapons are back online firing again, just not as powerful.

Sounds pretty good hey? Big alpha strike with ammo then switch to 'no ammo' mode and keep on trucking.

Computer swapping is also the reason that any ammo based system be required to have both primary and secondary systems be ammo based, otherwise it won't take long for people to figure out that they can unlink 2 ammo based primary weapon computers from the slaves then link the 2 non-ammo slaves together to bypass the ammo requirement once they've depleted their ammo.

Oh, and if anyone thinks that its not reasonable to have an ammo requirement for damage beam and damage pulse weapons, turning energy emitting "laser/maser" beams and pulse systems into advanced "plasma/fusion" systems requiring tanks of deuterium (heavy water) as ammo takes care of that concern.

 

[Nickizzy]

I disagree 100% with the concept of ammo for weapons being an effect.

If these weapons are going to be more powerful than standard weapons in exchange for requiring ammo then they need to be completely new systems, both computer and modules, NOT an added effect.

If ammo were added as an added effect then 3 seconds to go into build mode, select the primary computer, hit V on the ammo effect computer and suddenly the "ammo depleted" weapons are back online firing again, just not as powerful.

Sounds pretty good hey? Big alpha strike with ammo then switch to 'no ammo' mode and keep on trucking.

Computer swapping is also the reason that any ammo based system be required to have both primary and secondary systems be ammo based, otherwise it won't take long for people to figure out that they can unlink 2 ammo based primary weapon computers from the slaves then link the 2 non-ammo slaves together to bypass the ammo requirement once they've depleted their ammo.

Oh, and if anyone thinks that its not reasonable to have an ammo requirement for damage beam and damage pulse weapons, turning energy emitting "laser/maser" beams and pulse systems into advanced "plasma/fusion" systems requiring tanks of deuterium (heavy water) as ammo takes care of that concern.

What if unlinking/linking computers put computers offline for 10-20 seconds or until out-of-combat(like with shield regen). That would help everything about computer-switching in combat.

 

[cyberus111]

What if unlinking/linking computers put computers offline for 10-20 seconds or until out-of-combat(like with shield regen). That would help everything about computer-switching in combat.

That would still allow a ship that is out of ammo to break off, swap and return to combat rather than having to return to base or hook up with a supply ship and transfer ammo before returning to combat.

I still believe the only way to prevent abuse is to make the systems (ammo/no ammo) totally incompatable